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Bomb Explodes At PayPal Headquarters
Pooua writes to tell us that an explosive device left outside of PayPal headquarters exploded last night. The explosion was powerful enough to knock out one of their plate glass windows but thankfully that was the only casualty of the blast. Perhaps they should have offered employee protection instead?
Shouldn't be too difficult to find the culprit, just look for someone extremely dissatisfied with their service.
Seriously, anyone who thought they were having a bad time of it with PayPal will find that experience pales compared to the bad time they'll have for planting a bomb.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What happen?
Man, if I had a nickle for every time I wanted to bomb Paypal, I'd have... er... probably a real hassle getting all the money out of my Paypal account.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
... then the terrorists will have already have won.
Tweet, tweet.
are a blast!
So I've heard.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Looks more like the sort of thing I used to knock up as a teenager - Sodium Chlorate and sugar anyone?
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
I hear people rant about how terrible paypal is, I don't understand why. Someone please explain.
I get a better deal with an ATM card through paypal than I get through my own bank. I actually collect interest on all my money as if it were a savings account. My "free" checking at my bank doesn't give me interest on money in my checking account. And if I put money in my savings account I can get fined for taking money out of it too often.
If you want to go around bombing finanicial institutions why not go after the ones that are actually greedy and evil. (seriously I am not recommending this, instead of a bomb why not write a nasty letter or post a rant/complaint in your blog to boycott the company)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I just don't find any of this funny. Planting a bomb anywhere but in strict controlled testing areas is not a joke. Obviously this was at least meant to damage the building, and possibly even to harm people. Imagine for a minute that you're a tech at this location, regardless of who it is. You're not responsible for corporate policy. Yet you're in as much, or more danger from an attack like this than those who do make the decisions.
I'm just glad nobody was hurt, and that the damage was relatively minor. I hope the culprit or culprits are caught quickly, and dealt with harshly.
Because the election is one week away.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Because it's very easy to get your hands on low-grade nuclear material, wrap it around a conventional explosive, and create a "dirty bomb" that will throw a bunch of nuclear crap around and render the neighborhood effectively uninhabitable until it can be cleaned up. Do it in the rain and that might require digging up tons and tons of dirt and hauling it off, etc etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Chargeback my account eh!!?
I imagine when some saw a headline "PayPal Bombed" they thought, "They certainly have."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Because Kim Jong apparently had his paypal account frozen the week before.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I may not like some (a lot) of PayPall's policies, and I might wish paypall to go out of business. That said why do the 20-odd hackers that were in the building at the time deserve to be bombed?
Luckily, Our president is not some "RANDOM" idiot..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
and not in a good way.
If you're using the service to buy and sell on eBay, and everything else in the transaction goes smoothly, then PayPal workd fine. However, if you have a problem (with a buyer or seller) and you try and take it up with PayPal, you're going to get screwed. Let me explain how it works:
If you are a seller, and you ship and you "collect" money from PayPal and ship the item you sold, if the seller complains to PayPal (they can claim they didn't get the item, that it wasn't as advertised, etc.) PayPal will take the money out of your account because the transaction was "fraudulent" -- your loss: one item (which you shipped) since you won't be seeing the money. If you are a buyer, it works the other way around. If you pay for something and it never arrives, PayPal will refuse to refund the money.
As far as I can tell, in instances where there is a dispute, PayPal collects the money for themselves and the buyer and seller are out of luck. Some of this seems to be based on "who complains first" but generally if you use PayPal and have a problem, you can kiss your money goodbye. Add to this the fact that PayPal constantly pushes linking your PayPal account to your "real" bank account (apparently so they can clean you out in one fell swoop) and you have a recipe for... well, I'd say about 5 lbs of ammonium nitrate, some black powder, and a time-delay fuse.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
It's the NOC (eBay NOC, at that) we're talking about. Would you really want a group of geeks to get killed because you don't like PayPal's service? As an employee in another NOC, I'm just glad none of our people were hurt.
I believe the proper term is "nukular," an abbreviation of "nuke-you-la'r," itself a contraction of "nuke you later," a traditional Texan greeting derived from the intense heat of a Texan barbecue grill. Essentially, one is saying that the other person is always welcome at a barbecue.
How the term jumped over to fission/fusion-based weapons, I couldn't begin to guess.
Please rate your experience at PayPal:
A) Excellent
B) Good
C) Average
D) Poor
E) Want to bomb your damn company
Thank you!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What ever happened to leaving flaming sacks of crap on a porch??
While I cannot say that bombing the PayPal office is a good way to settle disputes, it still made me smile to read this article as I have recently been subjected to their horrible customer service.
I am a casual ebay user, and probably sell roughly 10 items a year. Since paypal is the defacto standard there, I use them and have it linked to my checking account to transfer payments to myself. Well, I recently sold an old video card for $100 and was paid for it through the paypal service. Now, after hearing about people not being able to transfer their funds etc, I always immediately transfer the $$$ to my checking account. So, I have my $100. 5 days later, paypal sends me a notice saying that the payment might be fraudulent and is being investigated. 2 days later, they say it is indeed fraudulent, and that $100 is being deducted from my paypal account. Great, I already shipped the item, so I call paypal, spend an hour on hold, and finally talk to someone. The only response I get is "sorry, can't do anything about it. Sorry, can't tell you the reason it was fraudulent." Now I already have the money in my checking, so its not like I'm totally screwed, but I can't use my account becuase it has that negative balance on it. Any money into it will automatically go against it. I can't cancel either becuase of it.
They also told me that my item was not valid for seller protectrion because it is an electronic item. Why the hell does it matter what item was sold???? I don't udnerstand why I am responsible for the fraudulent transaction when PayPal deemed this other users account valid and processed the payment in the first place. This is another example of a business who thinks that they can do business without any risk what-so-ever. Just screw the end user.
btw... If anyone has had a similar experience and has some advice as to how I can cancel this account or otherwise solve the problem, please let me know!
I got nothin'
I knew about this. I got an email saying that all of PayPal's servers had blown up and they had lost all my personal and banking information. Luckily I simply followed the link they provided (things must be bad over there - they didn't even use the regular PayPal URL) and updated all my info. Thanks to PayPal for their quick customer service and helping me avert this little disaster.
Were eBay affected by this? I've just got an email from them now . . .
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
I've been ripped off by PayPal twice, with absolutely no recourse whatsoever to get things rectified. The amounts involved are small enough that its not worth getting the legal system involved, but big enough that it's intensely irrirating. I think PayPal's business model is at least partly based on having free will to screw over individual customers in this manner.
While I don't even slightly agree with the bomber's methods, I do understand what would drive them to do this. Individuals are powerless against PayPal, so its no suprise they will lash out any way they can. This is a classic terrorist attack in that sense - someone who felt they had no options left, so they turned to the increasingly commonly accepted equalizer: bombings.
The very moment there is a viable alterntive to PayPal, I'll be switching (Google, are you listening? I'm getting desperate here!).
"Postage was quick, but the item exploded upon arrival."
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Actually... the man is more on the spot than you know.
I grew up in Missouri... and in my home city one of the larger industries is the call center industry. There are litterally dozens of _very_ large call centers in the city to choose from and they actually all pay well and give good benefits (they are competing for the workforce).
The reason they're all in Missouri is because of the accent... ie. none. Most Missourians (disregarding the hill-billys!) have a fairly neutral accent which lends itself well to call centers. The land is also pretty cheap and the taxes are fairly low... combining for a great place to plop a phone center.
So, anyway, yes... there is a lot of call-center outsourcing... but I do know that there are still a lot of call-centers here in the US and specifically in Missouri.
Friedmud
This article has been tagged with "terrorism." I can remember when people would hear this news and think not "terrorism," but "nutcase setting off a bomb."
-Rich
You know, the kids who are shooting up schools have typically been the subject of a systematic policy of harassment that is carried out by the students but with the effective blessing of the administration which does nothing to prevent it. the people really responsible for the columbine massacre (for example) are the members of the administration who did nothing to prevent bullying. if I'd had access to a gun while I was in high school, there were times when I very likely would have brought it to school and opened up on some of the asshole jocks who used to pick on me when I was just a mama's boy too pussified by his fatherless (and even father-figure-less) upbringing to fight back and stand up for himself. I frequently felt suicidal and was perpetually depressed from about sixth grade up to the time I dropped out of college and took the CHSPE, which was a turning point in my life because I got away from the harassment. I no longer had people striking and tripping me as I walked by even when I didn't look at them, no longer had people constantly assaulting my self-esteem.
But in fact this is all tacitly approved by the administration. I made frequent complaints in middle school, not understanding that fighting back would solve my problem. I finally got into a fight with a kid one-on-one, not a bully who strikes and leaves but just a kid who wanted respect and had no way to get it other than imitating the other kids. I gave him two black eyes and received an expulsion for my trouble - my reward for defending myself. Granted, I got a little out of control on him, but the school was willing to create a child who would get out of control when attacked, but not willing to protect him from violence so it wouldn't happen in the first place.
There are only three [groups of] people who you can blame for school shootings, and the perps aren't in any of them. They are the parents who fail to give their children workable strategies for solving their problems, the students who bully them, and the school administration that permits and in the end even encourages bullying by not acting to stop it.
Again, I was a really fucked up kid in school due to the way I was treated for being precocious, poor, and really tall, and it's a really good thing that I didn't have access to a firearm, because I likely would have used it. I was the kind of kid who would fantasize about that kind of stuff in class instead of doing my work because it's hard to concentrate on your schoolwork when you have to plan your exit from the classroom to minimize the time you spend next to people who typically assault you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have been with them for a long time too. I have allways been happy, but I had this one issue recently. I could not pay for an ebay auction because the seller requires a confirmed address. No big, I go through the steps to confirm, and get cycle errors. No big, I contact the seller and tell them about my issues, they say call paypal, and they can fix this for you. I contact paypal, and spend about 60 minutes on hold, and 15 minutes arguing with the "supervisor" about how waiting for 15 minutes and trying again is not going to solve my problems (they tried the classic "get him off the phone" routine.)
I was extremely upset, and after spending almost 80 minutes (yes 60 + 20 in one call) on hold, geting into an arguement with the "supervisor" I decided it just wasn't worth it!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Simple question here: Do you have free will?
Slash-for-Thought
Yeah. I'm sure in the future plutonium will be available at every corner drugstore, but in 2006 it's a little hard to come by.
Why target each other? The hackers were not the cause as far as I know. If people want to use violence, then they should select the correct target. I usually don't support violence, however, I can unsderstand why people get frustrated enough to do something like this. It seems that the little guy or the common person has absolutely no recourse when screwed by a big company. The police usually do not want to pursue people who screw over the common man. The FBI only assists if the amount is $5000 or above. Even a thousand dollars is a lot of money for the common person. However, governments do not care about the common person. It seems that the only way to fight back is by doing some sort of damage or breaking some law. I can now hear all of those "Well, if you do not like it, then do business with someone else people." The problem is that that "someone else" is also most likely a big corporation who also screws over some of their customers.
....." The guy drove that car around town and lots of people saw the sign. The targetted business almost closed down as a result. It is also easy to glue doors shut, cut air conditioning lines, use herbicide on landscaping, etc. Big business care about only one thing, and that thing is bringing in money. Damage the money stream will damage the company.
I just encourage people who feel the need to take some form of disruptive action to make sure they only affect the deserving target. The last major L.A. riot is a prime example of the wrongful use of violence. Why were small businessess and innocent truckers attacked when the police were the target of protesters? It seems to make more sense to me for the rioters to burn down, rob, or vandalize every police precint or police car rather than small businesses whose propriators were probably equally appalled at the verdict. Rather than using violence to punish a target, I suggest other, more creative action that reduces the chance of collateral damage. Does the target have a toll free number? A computer or botnet can fine the target by repeatedly calling that number (from an untracable line). How about bad publicity? I noticed a guy who had lage signs on his car that stated "I got ripped off by
A public utility is almost invincible against a customer who uses legal channels to file a complaint, however that same utility becomes very vulnerable to vandalism. It is deeply amazing what a crossed line, a closed valve, an open switch, or a plugged meter can do. It is also amazing what instruction passed onto others who are equally dissatisfied with service can also do. When a target is on the defensive it has to think of every way to prevent a malcontent from doing damage while a malcontent only has to discover a single way of exacting damage to be successful.